Wandering Souls - Cecile Pin - ★★.½

AUTHOR: Cecile Pin

NARRATORS: Aoife Hinds, Ioanna Kimbook and Ainsleigh Barber

GENRE: Historical Literary Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: March 21, 2023

RATING: 2.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A historical literary fiction about a Vietnamese family trying to make a new life in the Western world. The characters and the plot are mostly of the tried-and-tested kind. Haven’t read a novel in this setting before, so it was enlightening in some ways. The writing approach though left me with mixed feelings. Too flat and distanced to be emotionally impactful and too hurried to be intellectually impactful. Not bad, but I anticipated far better from an OwnVoices work. This is an outlier review.

Plot Preview:

In 1978, a Vietnamese father decides to follow his brother and make a new life for his family in the USA. He sends his eldest three children – Anh, Minh and Thanh (16, 13 and 10 respectively) – ahead to Hong Kong, with a promise that the rest of them will arrive in a few weeks. However, an unexpected tragedy leaves the trio orphaned, and young Anh suddenly finds herself as the sole caretaker of her two younger brothers.

As the months and years go by, we see Anh and her brothers live through the refugee camps, and finally settle in a new country. Not the one they wanted but one they need to accept as the best available option. Life in the UK is not a bed of roses, and the thorns seem to come up with greater frequency. Will Anh be able to fulfil the dreams of her late parents and make a better life for her brothers?

The story comes to us across multiple timelines (spanning four+ decades) and character perspectives. We get Anh’s third-person POV, and two other characters’ first-person POV in interludes, one of whom is unidentified for a major chunk of the narrative. There are also some interim snippets from real-life news articles and events, detailing the political situation and refugee policy of the Thatcher government, AND also some recollections from soldiers involved in ‘Operation Wandering Soul.’

Bookish Yays:

⛵ The “boat people” details. I liked that the book is based in the UK instead of the USA. I’ve not read anything about the Vietnamese-British before, so this was informative in that regard.

⛵ Neither a typical immigrant success story nor a typical immigrant failure story. Stays on the realistic mid-path for the most way.

⛵ The little political tidbits (especially Margaret Thatcher’s policy on refugee handling) and the actual newspaper articles related to refugee experiences. Though the latter numbered just a couple of entries, they were still the most shocking.

⛵ The title. Significant because it is derived from 'Operation Wandering Soul', a psychological warfare tactic conducted by the US armed forces during the Vietnam war to defeat the Việt Cộng morale and encourage desertions. The title also has two secondary meanings in the book, a literal one as well as a metaphorical one. A really clever nomenclature for such a story.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🚣🏻‍♀️ Anh as the main character. Great potential, especially in her doubts and uncertainties over the future. But after a while, her ‘woe-is-me’ attitude begins to get tiresome. There’s hardly any scene where she shows gratitude for her new circumstances. A more balanced and nuanced portrayal would have helped us not just relate to her but also root for her.

🚣🏻‍♀️ As expected from a debut novel on such an ambitious topic, the story covers a plethora of themes, including death of loved ones, grief, displacement from home and country, immigrant challenges, xenophobia, racism, intergenerational trauma, cultural expectations, trauma, colonialism, and a lot more. While many of these sound interconnected, some feel shoved in, especially when a remark doesn’t sound like the character’s voice but the author’s voice popping in for an unrelated comment about racism.

🚣🏻‍♀️ Only scattered details about Viet culture. We are told many things, but experience only a few.

Bookish Nays:

🌊 The sibling relationship across the main trio begins well, but after a point, the focus remains only on Anh, even though we see Minh’s trajectory going a challenging way. The other characters don’t even get enough page space. The portrayal of the few white characters is fairly stereotypical.

🌊 Despite the extensive list of hard-hitting themes, the emotions never feel intense. Most of the plot stays stoic in its reportage, leading to a disconnect from the pain.

🌊 A lot of unnecessary foreshadowing right from the start, leading to premature information on key events.

🌊 The unnamed narrator whose identity comes out only towards the end. It is so much tougher to relate to a character when you don’t know who’s talking and the events they are narrating feel so random.

🌊 One of the first-person POVs, the ‘wandering soul’ interlude. (You’ll know what I mean if you read the book.) An interesting writing choice, but also a weird one. This adds needless magical realism to a story that doesn’t need it, and contributes nothing to the overall plot.

🌊 The random back-and-forth time jumps, all the worse on audio as they don’t always come with an accompanying timestamp. The structure feels quite messy and if you don’t pay attention to the dates, you might find yourself lost. One of the time jumps is of almost two decades: too long for such a small book.

🌊 The world-building and atmosphere is minimal. The story stays character-focussed to such an extent that we know nothing except the characters.

🌊 The story spans more than four decades, and yet the book is only 240 pages long. That should show you how rushed everything is. The nuances that take a story from good to memorable don’t get any space.

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 5 hrs 13 min, is narrated by Aoife Hinds, Ioanna Kimbook and Ainsleigh Barber. Of these, only Barber is half-Vietnamese in origin though she was born in the UK. So not exactly OwnVoices narrators. This affects the credibility of the narration, especially as there are two POVs that ought to sound Vietnamese at least in their dialogues.

Further, thanks to the frequent time jumps and shifting POVs, the audio version isn't that easy to follow, all the more as the identity of the speaker and the timestamp aren’t always mentioned. I wouldn’t really recommend the audio version.

Overall, while the book tackles a community not often seen in fiction – the Vietnamese-British, the execution leaves far to be desired. The intent of this debut novel is in the right place, but the writing style and structure could have done with some finetuning.

A majority of readers have appreciated this story much better, and it was even longlisted for two major literary prizes in 2023. Mine is thus an outlier review. Please do read others’ thoughts and take a more informed decision on this book.

This might work better with those who have not much familiarity with immigrant narratives as they might find this more illuminating.

2.5 stars, rounding down wherever applicable for the audio version.